


an unfamiliar coast

by brideofquiet



Series: new topography [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 1950s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Artist Steve Rogers, Captain America Reverse Big Bang 2018, Homecoming, M/M, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Post-War, Reunions, Sad with a Happy Ending, Ten Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-16 15:38:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14814155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brideofquiet/pseuds/brideofquiet
Summary: He doesn’t have a concept of how long ten years is anywhere. Not even before he’d been yanked out of a natural, linear progression. He’d been six years old once; he’d been sixteen and then he’d been twenty-six. But the breadth of time between those moments—what the hell is ten years?A long, long time. That’s all he knows.(Bucky goes to war. Ten years later, he comes home.)





	an unfamiliar coast

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moblit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moblit/gifts).



> A big thank you to [steve-rogers](http://steve-rogers.tumblr.com/) / [moblit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moblit) for the beautiful art that inspired this story and made my first reverse bang a great experience. You'll find it embedded below.
> 
> Once again, thank you to [newsbypostcard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard) for the thorough beta. By this point, I'm pretty sure I owe her my firstborn child or at least like, a muffin basket. Please check out her RBB story as well.
> 
> Title comes from Dry the River's "Coast."

Quiet. He knows now that if he keeps his mouth shut, if he doesn’t make a sound, they’ll hardly remember he’s here. A solitary upside to being a person stuck inside a body that’s supposed to be a non-person: they forget you’re still in there.

Or think you aren’t. It doesn’t make a difference, in the short term—which is all he ever has. So he stays quiet.

“When the fuck are we landing anyway?”

“I look like the pilot to you?”

“You’re supposed to know what we’re doing.”

“I _do,_ I just don’t know when—oh, hey, look. There’s the skyline. You happy now?”

The Soldier shifts in his seat, only just. Not enough to bring notice, only so much as a body naturally needs. Through the grimy window of the aircraft, he sees the skyline. He’s seen a lot of skylines, can identify a lot of cities by the shape of their silhouettes alone—but this one.

 _This_ one.

He leans closer. The butt of a baton prods him in the chest. “Sit back.”

His eyes slide up to the man’s shoulder, then back to outside. He settles into the seat again, but he keeps his gaze trained out the window as the plane descends lower toward his city. The city. His.

“Pretty, huh?”

“Don’t speak to him.”

“Not like he’s responsive anyway. Creeps me out—he always like this?”

“What, robotic? Pretty much, but that’s the appeal. Does what he’s told.”

The plane rattles in the sharp wind coming off the ocean. In the summer, the sun beating down on the back of his neck, the breeze tugs at his hair while—

It bites in the winter, though. He remembers.

When they touch down at some airfield outside the boroughs, he stays quiet. He checks his gear, listens to the brief again. He thinks he must have known about the value of silence already—it’s never felt like a new skill. He hadn’t had to dig for it; it was right there, tried and tested. He had fought everything, at first. This new war, these new weapons and the people who put them in his hands. He’d fought actively, brutally, but then he had remembered how to shut up. The value of just shutting the hell up for once. What even the appearance of compliance can afford you. _Keep your goddamn head down, please—for me._

They hand him his gun. The door of the compound opens wide before him, its automated hinges whirring till it reveals the yawning gray of a winter sky.

He sets his teeth, and doesn’t say a word.

 

His first order of business: find a coat, a hat, and an alleyway. The first is easier—would’ve been easier if he wasn’t way the hell out in bumfuck Queens, but he makes do with the cover of a narrow gap between a house and the deli on the corner. He knows this neighborhood. He doesn’t know how he knows, like he doesn’t know how he knows a lot of things—but it lurks just under the surface. It’s been sitting precisely there for as long as he can remember, an iceberg in the water, like if he only dove down he could see the whole of it and understand its shape and balance.

He’ll have to breach the surface soon, fight whatever internal currents are keeping him above water. He could have before now, probably has before. But it’s been better to avoid that as much as he could till he was free and safe, lest he drown in it all. Focus on directive, on action and momentum—focus—

Was it his grandparents who lived—

No. _Focus_. He still needs a coat. And a hat. Maybe once he has those things, then he can consider why he knows this neighborhood. One thing at a time.

The window into the mudroom of the house off the alleyway is painted shut, but easy enough to pry open with his knife and slip inside. In a wardrobe in the first floor bedroom, he finds a suitable coat with a belt cinch at the waist. It hides his tac vest and the shape of his holster well enough. His trousers are still visible, but black trousers are black trousers—surely that’s still true. He knows it’s been years, however many, but people still have two legs. There’s a hat hanging on a hook on the wardrobe’s door, and he even finds a matching pair of gloves on the shelf above the rack. There’s a mirror too, and he futzes with tucking his hair under the hat, makes sure it sits right, licks his thumb to smooth an eyebrow.

He catches his own eye in the mirror.

With a flick of his wrist, he slams the door shut and yanks on the gloves. He doesn't have any time to waste. He needs—a crowd, now, something to disappear into. He nabs the change from the dish in the front hall and gestures a wordless apology to the house at large before disappearing out the window again. His feet take him left down the street, toward the station three blocks over.

No tail yet. That’s a good sign. Maybe he hasn’t botched it. Maybe he played his hand right this time.

 

* * *

 

It’s a month before he calls it. He would wait longer—wants to, even—but being on this side of the river is making him antsy. No one has found him. As far as he can tell, except for the minor fumble that had led him to crossing the bridge in the first place, they aren’t endeavoring all that hard to find him anyway.

Could be they don’t think it’s worth the effort. He hadn’t been a particularly successful project, besides the arm. Mediocre at best—an upjumped sergeant. His record speaks for itself. They’d stopped sending him out for anything critically important a while ago.

 _Their goddamn loss,_ he thinks, and spits the blood out of his mouth from where he’s worried his lip raw. It spatters dead center on the knot in the floorboard.

He pulls his coat back on and hopes to God he doesn’t smell so bad as to draw attention. He’s been able to manage food and a place to sleep, but everything else has been sketchy at best.

Headed south on foot, he decides he passes well enough. No one spares him more than a glance—just another vet, down on his luck. That’s not even a lie. He knows that now. A month is a long time to spend inside your own head. There’s a lot he knows now, that he didn’t at the start.

The breeze off the river is cold and bracing. He turns his face into it to let it pull at his skin till his cheeks and nose turn pink. From the walkway, he can see old Lady Liberty herself, standing tall and proud out in the middle of the bay, surrounded by water. He straightens his shoulders, just a little. His joints click, the metal shifting in counterpoint as everything settles into place. The chilled air feels refreshing in his lungs.

He looks to the left, toward the end of the bridge, and keeps walking.

 

There’s no one home.

He hadn’t knocked, so he supposes someone could be inside—but it’s not anyone he knows. From the rooftop of the next building over, he can see through the windows well enough. She wouldn’t have bought a new dining set—not in a thousand years would she have thrown out that table, those chairs, the matching glass-front hutch that held their dishes. _Your great-grandfather made this set with his own two hands,_ she would tell him any time he banged the end of his fork against the table top.

Now his mother’s dining room holds a formica table with chairs in a garish shade of chartreuse. She’d fall faint right there on the hardwood if she knew.

So she must not know. She must not be here. He wonders where—

Maybe it’s for the best, anyway. He hadn’t knocked. He knows what year it is now. What would he have said? How would he have explained it? His mother, his curly-headed sisters with their too-bright eyes—he’d held onto the thought of them all these years, somewhere in the back of his head. But maybe it’s better that they’ve disappeared. Maybe it serves him right, since he disappeared on them first.

Something tightens over his throat. Not a hand—something else.

He still has another address to check.

He keeps his head low as he walks, wary of being recognized. It’s coming back in sticky, clawing waves up the back of his throat—like retching, only worse, because there’s nothing physical he can expel. No relief, only a building pressure of familiarity tied together with grief into a larger and larger knot inside his skull. It looks the same. It doesn’t.

Maybe it was a bad idea to stay. He could’ve left. He still has money for a train all the way out of the city; enough people had pressed their spare change into his hand. He’ll just check their place first, see if he’s still there even though there’s no way in hell he is, then he’ll double back and catch the next train out of here. It would be better to sort himself out somewhere else anyway, someplace where the fissure of time isn’t so obvious.

He’d just like to be certain about this one thing first. He left a lot of shit behind in that rat trap. There’s some of it he might like back, someday. His nice shoes with the shiny brass detail. A couple records he wouldn’t mind hearing again.

No one’s there either. Or someone is, some lady and her pipsqueak kid eating dinner at a table by the window. They’d kept the couch there instead, because of how the light was good for reading in the evening, only sometimes they’d pull the curtain so that—

Well, that’s not their couch there anymore anyway. A lady and her kid instead.

He could track him down, probably. Somehow. He’d figure it out—needle in a haystack, sure, but a needle sharp as that one’s always leaving puncture marks in his wake. If he asked around, someone could tip him off, at least give him a street to start with.

If he’s alive. Scrappy son of a bitch might already be six feet under. If the idiot had his way, back then, surely he would be.

The seam of the left glove splits along the edge of his fist. He’s supposed to be dead, too, as far as anyone knows. Maybe he ought to just let it lie. Some stones are better left unturned. A gravestone is probably one of them. He’ll buy a train ticket and head for—Boston, or maybe farther, somewhere like Portland. He’d always liked seafood.

From his vantage point on the fire escape, he spots a head of blond hair round a corner and bob away into the crowd.

 _Sun’s still out, idiot,_ he thinks. _Where’s your goddamn hat?_

It takes a moment for the wires to connect. The spark hits him so hard he nearly topples over the railing. But their place had been—

He glances through the window again, but it’s still the lady, then back to the street where he’s—

Disappeared.

The fire escape creaks and shakes with how quickly he bolts down. His coat catches on the rail and tears, but he keeps on. At street level, he does his best to keep a standard walking pace before he remembers that this is New York and no one really gives two shits about someone half-jogging down the street. The hat slips off his head, but he doesn’t stop to collect it. His hair tumbles down in a mess; it doesn’t matter. He catches up, just enough to keep him within visible range, to keep him from slipping away.

And that’s the back of his stupid head, alright. Recognizable from space—Great Wall of China.

He follows, breath tight and stuttering in his chest. Keeps just enough distance between them that even if he were to glance over his shoulder, there’d be little chance he would recognize him. Or maybe he would.

He’s not sure he wants that, yet. He just wants to know where he’s living these days. How he’s living. If he’s doing well.

They don’t go very far—west mostly, which means he _must_ be doing well if he’s moved out to this part of the neighborhood. He tails him all the way to a squat apartment building of red brick, and that’s where it must end. If he follows up those stairs, he’ll be noticed. They don’t go anywhere but the landing. It reminds him of the old place, before they’d shacked up, only this one’s nicer. The door shuts and blocks that blond hair from view.

Maybe he could peek in through a window. He is a goddamn stealth operative. Surely he could avoid being seen, and even if he is, what does it matter now? He wants that. Doesn’t he?

Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s halfway up the steps. He strips off the coat, feeling overheated, and tosses it over the rail. It’s not as if derby tweed would have softened the shock anyhow.

There’s a little planter box on the landing, with tiny seedlings poking out of the dirt. He pauses, staring hard. Doesn’t the knucklehead know it’s still goddamn winter out here? It’s—freezing—he’s—

The door opens, and out comes that blond head again, jacket gone and watering can in hand.

For a moment, he gets to watch from ten feet away as Steve leans over to water his plants. His heart seizes in his chest. All the straps on his vest, probably.

When the top stair creaks under his boot, Steve glances up at him.

The watering can smacks to the floor. Its spray sprinkles his boots. Steve’s socks must be soaked, but he doesn’t seem to notice—or care, or know how to do anything but stare open-mouthed.

He knows how he must look. Terrible, hulking, backlit by the evening sun so his face is hardly even visible. Maybe that’s it—maybe Steve thinks he’s just some menace come to rob him of house and home, bedecked in black leather and in desperate need of a wash.

“Bucky?”

It would’ve been too much to ask that Steve hit him over the head with the watering can and send him on his way. Of course it would have. Of _course_ he would recognize him. Why would he ever expect anything less from him?

“Bucky,” Steve repeats, quieter this time. There’s a hitch in his voice, but he sounds sure.

No turning back now. He supposes he’d forfeited any say in the matter the moment he’d decided to follow him all the way home. Should’ve known better—if he’d wanted to stay away, he ought to have hightailed it the other direction.

Bucky shuffles a step forward and says, “Hey.”

Steve’s shoulders heave with a trembling inhale. Bucky drops his eyes to the discarded watering can, but then Steve’s stepping into his line of sight again. He’s not slack-jawed anymore. He searches Bucky’s face. The upward tilt of his brow makes him look like he’s—pleading, almost. Bucky huffs a breath. It’s too cold out here; his eyes are starting to water with it.

Steve’s close enough to reach out and touch, if he wanted.

“It’s you,” Steve says. His hand twitches at his side, like he thought about maybe—but it’s good that he doesn’t. Bucky’s not sure what he would have done if he had. “Buck?”

“What?”

“You—how did you—we all thought you were—”

“Yeah.”

“But you’re here.”

Bucky shrugs. “On your landing.”

“On my landing.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you should—” Steve breaks off, swallows hard. “Let’s get you inside where it’s warm. You wanna come inside with me?”

Bucky bites his lip, his eyes fluttering shut. Steve hasn’t stopped looking at him for a moment. When he opens his eyes again, there are Steve’s looking back. Steve raises an eyebrow in question—he’d asked something, right.

Bucky nods. “I do.”

“Okay,” Steve says. “Okay.”  

 

He takes the watering can and moves toward the door, only turning away as much as he possibly has to to lead. Like he’s afraid that if he—

Bucky forces down the lump in his throat and walks through the door when Steve holds it open for him. He hears the door shut and latch behind him. Steve circles around him; Bucky keeps him in the corner of his eye, but mostly he’s staring around the room. It’s—nice. Looks fancy around the edges, with the crown moulding and the built-ins crowded with books, but there are undeniable traces of Steve: a blanket rumpled in a sitting chair, a stupid amount of water glasses on various surfaces, pencils goddamned everywhere.

The lump forms again. He never was tidy, but now Bucky doesn’t mind so much. It makes the place look lived in, comfortable even.

“How about we—sit?” Steve says. He points toward the end of the room, where an archway leads to another room. “In the kitchen?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“Well, what do you want?”

Bucky casts him a dry look. “Kitchen’s fine.”

“Fine.”

Steve leads him through the archway, careful about distance, careful about how he’s walking—Jesus, when did he get so _careful?_ Like the whole place is made of eggshells. He gestures for Bucky to take a seat at the little four-top table in the corner of the kitchen. The wood frame creaks under his weight. Steve bustles around for a minute, fetching glasses, pouring them both some water from a pitcher in the refrigerator. No ice. Makes his teeth hurt, he always used to say.

He sets the glasses on the table and folds into the chair across from Bucky. Bucky reaches for a cup, taps his fingers against the side till it rings. Surely Steve has noticed this most glaring of differences by now, but Bucky doesn’t look to find out. A clock over the stove ticks out the seconds, impossibly steady.

“You ever do any dishes?” he asks.

“Are you—you’re _nagging_ me right now?”

“Guess so.”

Steve’s mouth drops open. “Holy shit,” he says, shaking his head. Then he starts laughing, so hard that he slumps forward till his forehead thunks against the tabletop. His body vibrates with it. The sound is muffled against the wood, but Bucky can hear it when it shifts to—something else.

He’s sobbing.

“Steve?”

Slowly, still trembling, Steve rights himself and blinks hard. He wipes roughly at his eyes with the back of a hand. “Can you—say that again, please.”

Bucky’s mouth pinches into a frown. “Steve.”

“Sorry, I just ... “ He sniffles and tucks his fingers around his water glass, hunching in on himself. “Haven’t heard you say my name in a long time.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“It’s just that—”

“I know, Steve.”

Steve meets his eye over the tabletop. Bucky drags in a slow breath and lets himself _look_ this time. His eyes are still that sharp ocean blue, but he’s got the beginnings of fine lines at the corners now. Around his mouth, too—he’s been smiling; good. His hair is the same shade, only it’s cut different now. Dresses the same, like he doesn’t give much of a shit about style but knows how to use an iron at least.

Bucky keeps coming back to his face. He does the mental math—again.

“It’s just that you’ve been gone for—”

“Ten years,” Bucky breathes. “Yeah.”

Steve is thirty-five years old now. He looks it. Bucky knows he must look older now too—even if he’s not sure how old, exactly, his body is.

It’s 1953. It’s been a goddamn decade since they last saw each other.

Everything is still choppy in his head, like a projector stuttering over the reel. He doesn’t have a concept of how long ten years is anywhere. Not even before he’d been yanked out of a natural, linear progression. He’d been six years old once; he’d been sixteen and then he’d been twenty-six. But the breadth of time between those moments—what the hell is ten years?

A long, long time. That’s all he knows.

“Bucky,” Steve says, the beginning of a question. He doesn’t continue. Bucky knows what he wants to ask, but he’ll wait for Steve to figure it out first. “I don’t understand. We buried you.”

“Did you?”

“There’s a headstone with your name on it in Holy Cross.” Steve’s grip on the glass tightens. “I put fresh flowers on it two weeks ago. White carnations.”

“Did you ever put a body in the ground?”

“No,” Steve breathes. “It’s just the marker.”

Bucky spreads his hands open on the table. His left glints under the light fixture. Steve’s eyes track to it, tightening, as if it might hold whatever answers he wants.

“What they told us,” Steve says, “was that your unit had been captured by the Jerries. Missing in action, the telegram said. When you never surfaced, not even after Armistice, they told us you were presumed dead. That we should stop waiting on you to come home because it wasn’t going to happen. We should have a funeral and move on.”

“Steve.”

“My last letter from you’s dated from ‘43. November 18, 1943. ”

“That—sounds about right, I think.”

“Where have you been for ten _years,_ Buck?” he croaks. “Jesus shit, why’s your arm like that? What the hell happened to you, huh?”

Bucky gasps in a breath, his eyes going glassy. “It—it’s hard to,” he manages before his throat seizes up.  Shit—shit, but he’s crying too now, like some taut cord’s finally pulled so tight inside him that it’s snapped. He wipes at his face and his fingers come away smudged with grime and grease. Steve mutters apologies, his hands fluttering across the table, but he keeps pulling back at the last second.

Bucky doesn’t know how to tell him it’s okay. It _isn’t_ okay.

But by Christ, he’s out—he’s _here._ This shouldn’t be the harder hurdle to vault. You fight the war, then you come home. They never said a damn word about it being more complicated than that. Only for him, it already had been, hadn’t it? Thrown off course.

“Bucky,” Steve repeats. “Say something. Give me something here.”

“I don’t know _how.”_

“Christ. Can’t you try?”

“I am trying,” Bucky says to the table. “Steve. Believe me.”

The force of Steve’s exhale practically hits him across the table. When Bucky glances up, Steve has one hand splayed over the lower half of his face. He peers at Bucky over his fingertips. It’s a look Bucky’s seen before; one that means he’s trying to temper himself.

“Okay, Buck,” Steve says eventually. “I believe you. Sorry—god, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Bucky mutters, worrying at the frayed edge of his sleeve.

“Hey, do you want—I’ve got some clean clothes if you want,” Steve says. “Running water and all, yeah? Let’s just do that first.”

Bucky’s brow twitches up. “You got your own washroom now?”

“I got two.” Steve snorts. “Hell, I got an _en suite_ like I’m the King of England or something.”

“This I gotta see to believe,” Bucky says, voice still shaky but fighting for steady ground. Grateful that Steve’s trying to give him some.

“Well, c’mon then.”

Bucky heaves himself out of the chair and follows Steve back through the living room and along a short hall. He barely registers the bedroom they pass through, too intent on the powder blue tile beyond the open door to the bathroom. The whole damn thing’s powder blue like a baby’s nursery. It’s ugly as sin.

Steve clears his throat behind him. “Shower knobs are self-explanatory, if you wanna—”

“I’ll just—the sink, probably,” Bucky says. “For now.”

“Right. I’ll get you some clothes.”

“Okay.”

“Bucky?”

“Yeah?”

“You can shut the door if you want, but do you mind if I sit out here?” Steve says to the floor. “That way if you need anything, I’ll hear easy.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Through the closing crack of the door, Bucky sees Steve move toward a dresser before he snaps it shut. He flicks the light on. It buzzes overhead, a low hum, and casts the room in an unflatteringly bright glow. It’s a small room, bigger than any washroom he’s ever had—but still small. He grips the edge of the sink and breathes a moment. There’s just the flimsy barrier between them. He can hear the slide of drawers as Steve opens and closes them, just on the other side of the door. He’s only in the bathroom. Sink. Toilet. Tub/shower combo and a plush rug under his feet.

That he’s dirtying. He bends down to undo his laces and yank the boots off, then tosses them into the tub. The buckles and straps on his holster and vest are stupidly complicated, but he gets those loose too till he’s down to the black undershirt and his pants. All he owns.

Only then does he look in the mirror. Every time he sees himself, he’s surprised to find that he still recognizes the reflection. Older, cheeks hollower, his skin duller—but that’s still him. He drags a hand over the rough stubble on his chin. Same dimple in the middle. Bares his teeth—all there, chip on the right canine.

His eyes seem bluer this time, but maybe that’s the stupid tile or the red around the edges. Just a trick of the room. That’s still him.

He survived. He did it.

There’s a soft knock at the door. “Got some clothes, when you want them,” Steve says.

“Okay. Toothbrush?”

“Oh,” Steve says. “Um, cabinet to your left. Mine’s the yellow one. Root around for whatever you need, okay?”

“Thanks.”

The holder’s on the lowest shelf of the cabinet. He grabs the spare sitting next to Steve’s and the toothpaste, too. While he’s brushing, he pokes around the cabinet, pulling out soap and deodorant to use next. There’s a couple bottles of medication on the top shelf, but he doesn’t nose that much—just glances at the labels. High blood pressure and everything else, nothing surprising.

He even drags a comb through his hair, though it’s no real use in making it look any kind of nice. He could cut it now. Same way he wouldn’t let them touch it—his choice. Maybe later.

“How you doing in there, Buck?” Steve asks, from just the other side of the door.

“Can I get those clothes?”

“Yeah, ‘course.”

There’s a shuffling sound, like someone getting up off the floor. Bucky opens the door a few inches to take the neat pile from Steve. He murmurs his thanks and closes the door again. Cutting the faucet on, he waits for it to warm before disrobing and dragging a washcloth over himself. Chest and armpits and behind his knees—wherever else. It gets him clean enough. Steve’s soap reeks of eucalyptus or something, so it fixes the stink anyway. He hadn’t really noticed it till it was gone.

The clothes fit surprisingly well. A pair of flannel sleep pants and a white crew neck—maybe Steve likes his pajamas big enough to swim in. He pulls on the clean socks and gives himself a last look-see in the mirror. Still cleans up alright, all things considered.

Steve’s sitting on the floor, back to the foot of the bed, when Bucky opens the door. He cracks the first smile Bucky’s seen him wear this decade—just a little half-thing, but it’s something. Bucky tries one on for size too and finds it fits a little funny, but it’s workable.

“Better?” Steve asks.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Of course.” Steve bites his lip, starts to shift so he can stand. It’s instinct when Bucky reaches out a hand for him to take. Eyes widening, Steve stares at the outstretched fingers a beat too long for comfort—but then he takes them. Bucky helps him up, then lets him go. It seems to take a moment for Steve to find his balance. He sways, like he’s dizzy, his fingers flexing at his side.

“You okay?” Bucky asks.

“Yeah, fine, it’s all just—” Steve shuts his eyes for a moment. “Half-expected I wouldn’t actually be able to touch you. Gimme a minute.”

“Spooky ghostie in your house.”

Steve laughs, strangled. “You blame me if that’s what I was thinking?”

“No. Here, you can—” He reaches for Steve’s wrist, uncertain but wanting. Steve doesn’t flinch from his grip, so Bucky guides Steve’s palm to lie flat over the left side of his chest. Just that light touch already makes Bucky feel more solid. When Steve cottons on to what he’s doing, he gasps softly and presses his hand closer. Beneath it, Bucky’s heart leaps inside his sternum—steady, thumping, real. Undeniably alive.

Steve nods, his jaw working. They’d both needed the reminder. His fingers flex and grip at Bucky’s chest, the pads just along the line where flesh ends and metal begins.

“You were captured,” Steve whispers, his eyes on their hands. “Did you only just now get free?”

Bucky nods.

“You were a P.O.W. for ten _years.”_

“I—yes.”

Steve’s hand contracts into a fist, balling Bucky’s shirt up. His brow furrows, heavy and angry. “If I’d’ve—if they’d only—”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, _Steve.”_ Bucky stumbles backward a step. “Don’t make this out like it’s your fault somehow.”

“If I’d been over there with you—”

“You would’ve—what? Saved me? Put an end to the war yourself? You ever looked in the mirror?”

Steve scowls at him. “Don’t be cruel.”

“Don’t be a goddamn moron and I won’t have to.”

“Maybe if they’d just let me—”

“I’m not playing the what-if game with you on this, Rogers. Not right now, not later—not ever.” Bucky pinches his brow, leaning against the doorframe for support. Then he snorts a laugh.

“What?” Steve asks. “Something funny?”

“Real fuckin funny, actually. Might as well be that I never left at all, for all that we’re still having the same exact fight.”

“I don’t think that’s very funny.”

“Yeah, well, you always were a sourpuss anyway. One of us has gotta have a sense of humor.”

Bucky cracks an eye open to see Steve staring daggers at him from across the room—and Christ, but he never thought he’d be so happy to see all that piss and vinegar directed at him again. But then Steve’s face falls, sudden, and Bucky feels it like a kick to the gut. Dammit.

“Steve,” he says.

Steve sticks his trembling chin out and says, “I won’t apologize for wishing I could’ve helped it.”

“And I’m not gonna ask you to, alright?”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes.

“Okay.”

“Do you—want some dinner or something,” Steve says, flat. “I’ve got leftover chicken. Fuck.”

“I know.”

“One thing at a time.”

“I shouldn’t have just—like this—I can—”

“Don’t you dare walk back out that door,” Steve says, then backpedals, eyes widening. “I mean, you _can,_ just—please don’t. Please stay.”

It’s not as if he has anywhere else to go. It’s not as if he wants to be anyplace else at all. So Bucky nods and gestures toward the door to the hall. “You said chicken?”

“Chicken. Yeah, c’mon, I’ll heat it up.”

Bucky pads after him back into the kitchen, where Steve hauls a ceramic dish out of the fridge. Whatever’s inside looks nicer than the shit he used to scrape together—but he’s had time to learn, Bucky guesses. It’s not as if he minds so much either way. He opens his mouth to ask if there’s anything he can do to help, when a rattling at the door pulls him up short.

He goes still, staring—it’s dark outside now. But why would someone—

Steve’s staring, too, his face gone pale. No. No, shit fuck _no—_

Bucky’s half a second from grabbing Steve around the waist and hauling him out the back window when there’s a precise, rhythmic knock at the door. Shave and a haircut.

“Steve! My key’s sticking again!” a voice calls.

“Steve?” Bucky says, bewildered.

Steve spins to face him, his mouth pinched with—something. “Just sit a second, will you? I need to—”

“I know you’re home, Steve! Let me in!”

“Please just sit down, Buck,” Steve says. “It’s okay. I’ll be right back, alright?”

“Who is that at the door?”

“That’s Dean, my—um, my partner. He lives here, too.”

“Oh.” The air in the room turns thick like curdling. Bucky falls into a seat at the table, the chair screeching on the floor. “Okay,” he breathes. “Better let him in then.”

It takes another round of banging at the door before Steve makes a move. He has to tear his eyes away from Bucky first. Then he’s out of the kitchen and Bucky can’t see him—only knows by listening when he throws the lock and opens the door.

“Hey, sorry,” Steve says. “Welcome home.”

“Thank you, darling,” says shave and a haircut. There’s a quiet smacking sound like—well, Bucky knows that sound well enough. Not his business partner, then. “We have to get that key fixed.”

“I can take mine to the locksmith and have another copy made for you.”

“Are you sure it’s not the lock?”

“I guess it could be. Listen, Dean.”

“What is it?” A clinking—keys hitting a dish. “Steve, are you okay? What’s wrong? You look like you’re about to be sick. Are you sick?”

“No, no, it’s not that. We have a guest.”

“Do we? Where?”

“He’s in the kitchen—hey, hang on a second. I gotta tell you something first, and I need you to really listen to me.”

“What’s this about?” Dean’s voice drops low. “Steve, are we in trouble here?”

 _“No,_ just let me explain.”

“Well, please do. You’re scaring me.”

“Do you remember my friend Bucky?”

A short pause. Then, loaded: “Steve.”

Bucky shouldn’t be hearing this, he knows, but it’s not as if he’s going to stuff his ears. It’s not his fault Steve’s a loudmouth. He sits still and quiet, like he’s used to, with his hands in fists over his knees.

“Right, well, it turns out there was a … a mix-up, of some kind, I guess. I’m still wrapping my head around it, so I get if you’re confused, too.”

“What do you mean, a mix-up? A mix-up of what?”

“Turns out—he’s alive. Bucky’s alive.”

The silence is longer this time.

“No,” Dean says, “your friend Bucky is dead.”

“He’s not, though. He’s alive.”

“And you mean to tell me,” Dean says slowly, “that he’s in our kitchen right now? Your dead friend is sitting where we have our toast in the morning.”

“Yes.”

“Was he _resurrected?_ ”

“I told you there was a mix-up.” Steve exhales, loud enough to hear. “He was never dead, I don’t think.”

“You don’t think. Okay, right. You’re certain it’s him and not an imposter?”

There’s no audible answer. Bucky can guess at Steve’s expression, his chin stuck defiantly in the air.

“Alright, well, if it’s really him, where has he been the past ten years?”

“I’m not sure yet—”

“Did he just show up at the door? What’s he doing here?”

“Dean—”

“Is he a deserter? Why come back now—unless he wants money, or something, good God, I ought to call the police—”

 _“Dean,”_ Steve snarls. “Lower your goddamn voice. It’s nothing like that.”

“How do you know that? You just said you didn’t know.”

The door opens. “Come outside with me for a minute.”

“Steve,” Dean starts, but Steve heads him off.

“Come outside with me right now.”

The apartment rattles faintly when the door snaps shut again. Bucky’s stomach turns so hard and so suddenly that he nearly collapses over the table. Christ. _Jesus_ Christ. What has he done by showing up here, a beggar at their door? Worse than that—he’s a wasp in the beehive, out of place and already shredding it all to pieces. He ought to go, before he can inflict any more damage on this home. Steve’s _home._ Where he lives with a man named Dean who has surely washed his hair in the past week, maybe more than once.

The back window looks even more promising than before. He could throw the lock and be gone, leaving Steve to think this was all some fever dream. Maybe that’s cruel, but surely it’s worse to stay. What gives him the right?

He pushes back from the table just as the door opens again. Shit—too slow. Or maybe they’ve come back inside to toss him out, save him the trouble of doing it himself.

“Thank you,” Steve is saying. “I know it’s fucked, but I don’t think he has anywhere else to go.”

“I’m not some monster.”

“I never said you were. I don’t think that.” Quiet, again. “Dean, you know that I—”

“I know, Steve.” Dean sighs, long and measured. “Can I meet him now?”

“Yes. Yeah, of course.”

No dice, then. He’ll have to stay. What could Steve have said to change things in a matter of minutes?

There’s shuffling, footsteps on the rug. Bucky’s hand flies out for his water glass, just to give him a reason not to sit so stiffly. He manages to swallow just before Steve comes in through the archway, his face pale. A tall man with neatly coiffed black hair follows behind him. His three-piece suit is pressed and crisp, and Bucky can tell he’s working hard to keep his face the same way. He eyes Bucky’s clothes, which—right. Makes sense now. Bucky tucks a piece of limp hair behind his ear.

“Bucky, this is Dean Chambers,” Steve says, gesturing between them a bit helplessly. “Dean, meet Bucky Barnes.”

“How do you do?” Dean says. He smiles, but doesn’t cross the room to shake Bucky’s hand. It’s just as well anyway, though it strikes Bucky as strange that a man dressed so neatly might forgo niceties, however trivial. But what does he know? Maybe people don’t shake hands anymore.

“Good to meet you,” Bucky says.

“Bucky,” Steve says, “Dean is—well, I already told you, he’s my—an art dealer. I mean, I didn’t tell you that, but he’s an art dealer. Not mine, not really anyway, I kind of handle my own business now. But it started out that way …” He trails off, then swallows roughly. “Anyways.”

“Right,” Dean says. He looks to Bucky, as if expecting some sort of reaction, but he glances away after half a second. “Steve, do you have that chicken out for a reason?”

“Oh, yes, the oven should be preheated by now,” Steve says. He makes for the counter with the speed of someone all too grateful to have something to do with his hands. Bucky fiddles with his water glass, wishing for the same. “It’ll just take a few minutes. You hungry, Dean?”

“Not particularly, but I’ll sit with you both.”

“Sure,” Steve says, “that’s fine.”

“I need a drink. You could use one too, Steve.”

But Steve shakes his head. “No, I’m fine. Thank you.”

“Suit yourself,” Dean says. Halfway across the kitchen, he pauses and turns toward Bucky. “How about you?”

Teeth digging into his lip, Bucky gestures toward his water.

Without another word, Dean whisks out to the living room, where the liquor cabinet must be. In their moment alone, Steve takes the chair next to Bucky’s and lays his hand on the table. “Bucky,” he begins, eyes wide.

“Don’t, alright?” Bucky rasps. “It’s fine.”

Steve drops his hand to his lap just as Dean returns with a glass of—gin, maybe, or vodka, Bucky can’t tell. He sits across from them, a broad smile plastered on his face. “So, Bucky, what brings you back to Brooklyn?”

“Um,” Bucky says, blinking.

“I’m only curious,” Dean says, meeting Steve’s warning gaze. “Though I suppose it’s uncouth of me to ask what happened to you.”

“Dean,” Steve hisses.

“I know, I know—did I actually ask? No.” Dean glances at Bucky. “My apologies.”

“It’s fine,” Bucky repeats.

“So, like Steve said, I’m an art dealer. Are you here for work? Do you work?”

Steve, for a moment, looks like he wants the answer, too. Bucky doesn’t know how he could possibly grow more tense, but he must—and visibly, too. Dean’s eyebrows raise. At the same time, Steve’s fold low over his face.

“I won’t tell you again, Dean."

Dean takes a pointed swig of his drink. They sit in silence for a nauseating minute while the smell of chicken starts to permeate the air. Bucky casts around for something, anything to say.

“Art dealer,” he says, and looks to Steve. “You said he’s yours?”

Something quietly pleased flits across Steve’s face. “Well—”

“I imagine you know Steve’s an artist,” Dean says.

“Always said,” Bucky mumbles with a shrug. It’s not as if he could claim to know anything so substantial about Steve now.

“Well, he’s the bona fide thing now and a commercial success to boot. No more street peddling, and in fact, I can hardly keep his work on the walls. Of course, that’s how we met in the first place.”

“I think you’re putting that all a bit kindly,” Steve says, squirming in his chair.

“I am not,” Dean insists. “We sold two paintings of yours just last week, remember?”

“I’ll have replacements in soon as I can.”

“That’s not what I’m—no business at the table, Steve, that’s your rule. I’m only trying to illustrate for Bucky here how much you’ve achieved that he’s missed out on.”

Bucky’s hands constrict in his lap. Dean makes good points. And for all Steve saw the world clearly, he never did see himself like that—needed someone to knock sense into him. Seems Dean does alright at that.

“Have you seen any of his recent work, Bucky?” Dean continues. “Most of it’s down at the gallery, but we have a few smaller pieces in the study. Of course, Steve won’t let me actually hang any of them here, which I don’t understand—”

“I’ve told you a thousand times, Dean, it’s so pretentious—hanging my own artwork in my own damn house, Jesus Christ.”

The timer dings. The room falls quiet, save for the trilling. Then Steve scrambles out of his chair to the oven and grabs a mit to pull the dish out. The smell of the chicken has saturated the room by now, and by all accounts it smells good, but Bucky isn’t sure he could stomach it at the moment.

“Well, anyway, I’ll leave you two to it,” Dean says.

Steve spins on his heel, plates in hand. “You’re really not going to eat?”

“There’s not enough to go around, Steve,” Dean says, one eyebrow raised. “I’ve got work to finish up in the study anyway. Nice to meet you, Bucky.”

“Likewise,” Bucky says automatically. Dean takes his drink and disappears down the hall, which must lead to the study, too. A moment later, a door shuts with a sharp click.

“Here,” Steve says and sets both plates down on the table. Bucky stares at his, some kind of glazed chicken breast. “I’m sorry about him.”

“Seems alright.”

“He’s a good man. He only talks up like that when he’s feeling … Well, he just never expected to meet you, is all.”

“Look, Steve.”

“What? Do you want more water?”

“No, I think that I should—”

Steve takes the fork from Bucky’s plate and holds it out for him, deliberate. “Eat your dinner, Bucky. Just eat with me.”

He leaves no room for balking. Slowly, Bucky reaches for the fork. They eat in silence till their plates are clean. Though he’d realized he was ravenous, Bucky finds himself forcing down the last few bites—he’s not used to food like this, nor so much of it. His stomach feels distended and strange by the time he sets his fork aside. He takes a long sip of water to try to alleviate it, but it doesn’t do him much good. He feels like he might throw up.

“I should’ve said something earlier,” Steve says, quiet. “Before he showed up, so you weren’t blindsided like that.”

“Why?”

“Bucky.”

“It’s not like I would’ve expected you to mourn forever, Steve.”

Steve huffs a breath. “Yeah, well.”

“I’m just—playing catch-up. Don’t mind me,” Bucky says, and finds Steve’s eye over the table. “You’ve been living. That’s good to see. You deserve to be happy.”

“You don’t have to say all that.”

“I mean it.” Bucky taps his fingers to the table, emphasizing his point. “How long you two been together?”

“Four years—off and on, known each other longer than that.”

“Right, he’s your art dealer?”

“Not in an official capacity now, but he was pretty instrumental in my initial success. Campaigned hard to get me into some of my earliest gallery exhibitions.”

“You’ll have to show me your stuff, hotshot.”

Steve points at Bucky’s empty plate. “You done with that?”

Bucky nods and slides the plate toward him. Steve takes both, and the water glasses too, and dumps them in the sink. He pauses over the basin, with his hands gripping the edge. His back is a solid line of tension. Little knobs of his spine under the thin shirt.

“I don’t mean to be acting so strange,” Steve whispers, soft enough Bucky hardly knows if he’s meant to hear. “It’s just—it _is_ strange, Buck.”

“I know.”

Steve turns to face him. “I don’t mean it like that.”

“Okay.”

“I’m just tired right now, is all. I think I need a break.”

“Okay.” Bucky shifts, preparing to stand. “Okay, I can just—”

“Our couch is real comfortable,” Steve says and takes a step closer to him. “We’ve got plenty of extra blankets, so I can make you up a bed.”

Bucky blinks hard, once—twice.

“I’m not turning you out into the cold, Bucky,” Steve says, his voice steady. “You can stay right here with me as long as you want to.”

“Seems like Dean might—”

“You don’t need to worry about what Dean does or doesn’t mind. That’s for me.” This time, it’s Steve who holds out his hand. “Let’s get some rest, huh?”

The heat from Steve’s fingers lingers on his skin while Steve fashions him a makeshift bed. He even fluffs the pillow, turns down the top blanket. There’s just a lamp on in the living room now. In the near dark, Bucky feels the lethargy hit him all at once—baseball bat to the back of his skull. It’s more than physical. Sleep won’t help. This tiredness runs much deeper.

“That door’s another bathroom,” Steve says, “if you need it.”

“Thanks.”

Steve turns toward him, and his face is distorted by shadow. He looks like he’s been smacked with a stick too, only he seems sorry about it for some reason. Bucky knows what that look means—how he must be thinking he ought to be handling this better, like he could do a better job if he tried harder. Bucky’s thinking the same thing.

Some small part of him knows it’s not true. They’re doing the best they can. It’s just that they’re old now, and maybe their best isn’t so good anymore. If it ever even was.

“Hey, Buck?”

“Yeah?” Bucky says.

“What did happen?”

“Steve …”

“Were you—you were just a P.O.W.? That whole time?”

Bucky’s mouth forms a grim line. “Thought you said you needed a break.”

“You’re right.” Steve sighs. “Sorry, I know. Curiosity isn’t the right word, I’m just trying to—put it together.”

“Some things you can’t unlearn, Steve.”

Steve blinks, hard. “What’s that mean?”

“Only that—” Bucky’s throat convulses. “You might not want to know.”

“I do, though.”

“I promise you,” Bucky says, “that you don’t.”

Under a pinched brow, Steve’s eyes flick from Bucky’s face to his left hand where his fingers knot in the shirt hem. He’s not stupid. Shit at time tables back in grade school, sure, but Steve could put two and two together. Bucky can see it happening on his face.

“What did they do to you, Bucky?”

Bucky shakes his head, jerky.

“They hurt you,” Steve says, “didn’t they?”

It’s not as if Bucky really needs to answer that, so he doesn’t bother. Silence is response enough. Steve lets out a heavy breath.  

“I’m tired,” Bucky says, his eyes on the ground.

“Okay,” Steve says. “I know. But before I go, would you want—do you mind if I—”

Bucky looks up to see him squirming, his arms half-raised. Steve’s mouth is glued shut like he’s holding something back. Just as Steve starts to drop his hands, Bucky reaches out with his. He’s not sure what he means by it, what he’s asking for, but they both follow the gesture anyway. Steve circles the coffee table till he’s close enough to touch.

They’re all stiff arms at first, too tense and awkward. Then Steve shudders and staggers closer. His hands clutch at Bucky’s waist, wrap around him, hold him tight. He’s warm, breathing ragged at Bucky’s loose shirt collar, and that’s all it takes for Bucky to melt, too. He cradles Steve against him, one hand at the back of his neck, and buries his face in Steve’s hair.

He smells just the same—spearmint gum, bit of honey.

Bucky’s not sure how long he stands there holding him. He hadn’t even realized he wanted it so bad till it was happening. A clock ticks somewhere in the room, but he pays it no mind. He’d probably stand here another decade and not even notice. His head’s a jumble, a technicolor mess of memory spilling out at him, but Steve’s little hiccoughing breaths keep him grounded. Somewhere he can find his footing.

Steve pulls back first. His face is wet, and it wouldn’t take much effort at all for Bucky to just—but he doesn’t. He gives Steve room to grab his own shirt collar to wipe his cheeks. Bucky lets his own face alone; it’ll dry eventually. It takes another few minutes for them to disentangle completely.

Steve wraps both arms around his own middle, still shivering a little. “I’m not so heavy a sleeper anymore,” he says, “so if you need anything, just call out, okay? I’ll hear you.”

Bucky knows what he’s saying. He sits down on the couch and makes a point of getting comfortable, eyes never leaving Steve’s. “Thanks for the set-up,” he says.

“Of course. We’ll talk more in the morning, I promise. I just …”

“I’m tired too, Steve.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d bet.”

“In the morning.”

“Okay.”

“Goodnight, Steve.”

“I hope you sleep alright. ‘Night, Buck.”

Steve turns and heads down the hall. The door to the bedroom whines on its hinges. He hears the slide of drawers again, running water. Then the light spilling through the crack under the door cuts out. Bucky leaves the lamp on and lies down. It’s quiet. He stares at an empty glass on the coffee table and thinks about sleeping.

He tries not to think about anything else.

Some time later, he hears another door open and close. Dean going to bed. The bedroom door squeaks again. There’s murmuring voices—pitched too low for Bucky to make out any words. Water and drawers again, normal sounds, end-of-the-day sounds. It makes his breath sit heavier in his chest.

If he stays very still, he can almost hear them talking. He picks out his name a few times. The voices get steadily louder.

“I don’t know,” Steve says.

The response is too quiet.

Loudmouth Rogers: “I haven’t asked, okay? That’s not my priority.”

Something sharp.

“I’m not doing this right now,” Steve says. “I’m too tired. Please just come to bed?”

The apartment goes quiet for a long time after that. The refrigerator hums and the clock ticks steady, and the rhythm of a home is almost enough to put him to sleep. His body wants it. Like he’s been running full tilt for as long as he can remember and finally got the chance to stop, he feels on the edge of collapse. He supposes that’s not all that far from the mark. Running a marathon, running a long game—both deplete the stamina. He’d like nothing more than to sleep.

But his brain won’t shut off. Too busy solidifying again. He can’t be mad about it. There were so many times the whole thing had been on the edge of obliteration—so many times they’d almost gotten him, almost found him out, when he’d almost said to hell with it all anyway, what does it matter?

He hadn’t even dared to let himself hope. Hope wasn’t what saved him. Hope’s too dangerous. It’s got blond hair and blue eyes and curses up a storm when you call it insignificant. They’d never managed to take it from him—that much he’d made goddamn sure of—but that was only because he knew it wouldn’t do him any good where he was.

No, it had been single-minded focus that got him out. There hadn’t been room for much of anything else.

Only now—well, now he’s got wide open spaces. Too much shit to contemplate. He’d forgotten that being a real person is even harder, somehow.

Steve’s in the next room over. Does he still snore when he sleeps on his back? Never even that loud, but Bucky’d had to shake him awake now and again to get him to turn over. More often than not, Steve would roll onto his side and cuddle up close to Bucky—closer than he already was, on that joke of a full-size mattress. Bucky would fall back asleep with Steve’s breath at his neck, or with an arm slung over Steve’s waist.

That’s the kind of mess his head is churning out at him like newspapers hot off the press, while Steve sleeps in his big old bed with his—partner.

He’s got more than just new digs and smile lines. Ten years.

It’s just as well. Bucky had meant what he said. As far as Steve had been concerned, legally and emotionally and every other way that mattered, Bucky was dead. They’d had a funeral. Body under it or no, there was a headstone with his name on it.

Bucky doesn’t begrudge Steve a single thing. He’s not angry.

He’s just—behind.

 

* * *

 

He must fall asleep at some point, because next thing he knows, he wakes up with a feeling like his stomach is trying to leap out of his throat. He gives it a moment, just to see if it passes on its own. His gut churns and flops—no, then. Something’s coming up the pipe. He bolts upright, tossing the blanket aside before he stumbles toward the bathroom.

He manages to get the lid to the commode up before retching into it. So much for his nice meal. It doesn’t look nearly so appetizing on this side. The light in the bathroom flicks on, but he hardly registers it, too busy dry heaving. _Nothing left,_ he thinks. _Give it a rest._

Eventually his body shows a modicum of mercy. Knees aching, he slides sideways till he’s wedged between the toilet and the wall. His cheek presses flat to the ceramic lip of the toilet. It’s not particularly sanitary, but he’d had worse earlier in the month. Here’s hoping Steve scrubs this thing on a semi-regular basis.

Someone flushes the commode for him. Thankfully nothing splashes in his face, though it’s not like it would make much of a difference to him. He blinks weary eyes open to see Steve crouched in front of the sink, watching him with his face all pinched up in concern.

“Water?” Steve asks, soft like someone trying not to wake a baby.

Bucky shakes his head.

“Washcloth?”

He thinks for a minute, then sticks his hand out. A minute later, there’s something warm and wet in it. Bucky drags the washcloth over his face, then lets it drop to the floor.

“You want some help back to the couch?” Steve asks.

Bucky just grunts and keeps his eyes closed.

“You’re gonna get a crick in your neck like that,” Steve says. Silence for a long beat, then: “You want me to just leave you alone?”

Slowly, Bucky adjusts his head to get a proper look at him. Steve looks rumpled in a terry cloth robe, equal parts exhausted and upset. Looking at him makes Bucky’s stomach give another unsettling lurch. It’s not that he wants him to leave—except that he does, for right now. Those faint crow’s feet are making his head swim. He doesn’t want to think about it anymore.

He closes his eyes again. Steve sighs—quiet, pained.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll—see you in the morning, Buck. Feel better.”

The light cuts out, and the buzzing in his head abates in the dark. This time, he’s tired enough that he falls properly asleep.

 

Steve was right. Bucky wakes up stiff as a statue sometime later. There’s no window in the bathroom, so he can’t be certain it’s morning, but surely it must be by now. He won’t be going back to sleep at any rate. He sits up slowly, his joints popping in a disturbing cacophony. His mouth still tastes like vomit. Water—that’d be good.

Just as he’s making moves to stand, the cracked door swings open. Steve stands there, still in his robe, a glass of water in one hand.

“Oh,” he says, “good. Okay. I was just coming to see if you were up.”

“‘M’up,” Bucky mumbles and pushes himself upright.

“Here.” Steve leans down to hand him the water. “I’ve got Pepto-Bismol if you need it still. Or aspirin, either.”

Bucky downs the water in one long pull, then wipes his mouth with the back of a hand. He sets the glass aside and starts to haul himself up, using the commode for leverage.

Steve’s hands flutter toward him. “Here, I can—”

“I got it, Steve.”

“Okay, I’ll—I’ll be in the kitchen, then,” Steve says, and ducks away rather than hover while Bucky gets on his feet. The mirror stares him down once he’s up. Bucky ignores it in favor of the sink, where he splashes water on his face then leans down to stick his whole head under the faucet. The cool water feels nice on his scalp—just bracing enough. When he’s done with a cursory scrub, he cuts the water and dries himself as best he can with a hand towel. His wet hair brushes his shoulders, dampening the t-shirt he managed not to ruin last night.

He wonders what Steve had done with his things from yesterday, his boots and all. It’s strange, to be barefoot. He can’t remember when he’d last been without shoes. The last time he’d worn breezy cotton like this. His toes against the tile floor look foreign to him. He wiggles them a bit, then braves the mirror.

His eyes are bloodshot—from the vomiting, probably. A few burst blood vessels around them. But besides that he looks alright. Still here. He hadn’t dreamed it.

Only now, he has to face the day. Face Steve. Catch up.

He cuts the light out and shuts the door behind him, headed for the kitchen. Steve is already there, futzing around in the open door of the fridge. There must be coffee brewing somewhere; the whole room smells of it. When Steve doesn’t turn around, Bucky clears his throat to let him know he’s there. He doesn’t make so much noise anymore, when he moves.

“Oh,” Steve says, jumping a little. He spins around and gives Bucky a half-aborted smile, like he thought better of it halfway through. “Morning. I’d ask how you slept, but, well …”

Bucky shrugs, slight. “Yeah. How about you?”

Steve’s lips purse. He turns back toward the fridge for a carton of eggs. With his back turned, he says, “Fine, fine—you know.”

“Don’t know, actually. Why I asked.”

“Right.” Steve sets the eggs down gingerly. “How about you sit down? I’ll pour you a cup of coffee and get breakfast started. I’ve got the eggs out, but I can fix whatever you want. I mean, you know I’m not too great a cook, but I can do an omelette or pancakes or something without too much trouble—”

“You don’t have to do all that,” Bucky interrupts.

“I don’t mind, Buck.”

“I can fix my own coffee.”

“Bucky—”

“I’ve got it.”

“I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t want to do it. It’s not like it’s some burden. I have to eat, too.”

Bucky lets a heavy breath out through his nose. The poor night’s sleep hasn’t made them any better at this, apparently. Yesterday it had been new; today they have to settle into it and figure out where to go from here.

He stalks to the kitchen table and sits down. “Fine,” he mutters.

“Good,” Steve says, then turns toward the stove. “I’m making fucking omelettes. Do you want coffee?”

“Please.”

Thirty seconds later, Steve sets a mug down on the table in front of him. The mug looks hand-thrown, like maybe Steve has a potter friend now. Bucky lifts it and takes a sip—splash of cream, no sugar, just the way he’d always liked. It makes something small inside him ache, like a yellow-green bruise. “Thank you,” he says, and takes another sip.

Steve hums in acknowledgement, cracking eggs into a bowl indelicately. While he busies himself preparing breakfast, Bucky plucks the newspaper from the other side of the table. He’s not so far out the loop, as far as global events are concerned. Headlines are easier for him to handle. He sticks his nose into the fold for the ten minutes it takes before Steve’s setting plates on the table.

“Smells good,” Bucky says, refolding the paper.

Steve takes a seat too. “Nothing fancy.”

They eat quietly for a few minutes. Steve’s eyes flicker between the paper and Bucky, but he doesn’t say anything. Bucky thinks he prefers it when he’s being annoying, over the stupid wide-eyed thing he’s doing now.

“I take it you tried to go to Korea, too,” Bucky says. He doesn’t bother making it a question.

Steve barks a laugh. “Me and Uncle Sam don’t get along so much anymore, actually.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow, but then his expression folds. That makes sense.

“So just the once,” Steve says, then shoves a bite of egg in his mouth.

Bucky flashes a glare at him. “Asshole.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve mutters with his mouth full, “I get it, I’m a fuck-up.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Really?”

“No. I know why you try.”

“So that makes me an asshole, but not a fuck-up?”

“Yes.”

“Well, thanks for the distinction.”

“Any time.”

Bucky insists on helping with clean-up when they’re done. Steve dries the dishes with a towel, eyeing Bucky’s hands submerged in the sink to scrub away the cooked-on egg. With a quiet sigh, Bucky lifts his left hand up and holds it out so that Steve doesn’t have to be so furtive about his staring. He wiggles his fingers; the movement’s mostly fluid, only off if you know to watch for it. Like a film that’s missing a few frames.

“That is—well …” Steve frowns, clutching a fork so hard his knuckles go white.

“I know.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Cybernetic prosthetic, ‘s’what it’s called,” Bucky says, dunking both hands back in the water to finish his job. “Lost the real arm—in the war, I guess, I don’t really remember exactly how. They gave me this one instead. Wired it into my head.”

“They being—the Nazis.”

“Well.” Close enough, anyway. Same difference to Steve. “Yeah.”

“Fuck.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s really not, Buck. You don’t have to pretend for me.”

“I’m not gonna blubber on you about it.” He pulls the stopper on the drain, then stands there with his hands wrapped over the edge of the sink. Steve’s watching him; he can feel it like a physical touch. “Look, Steve—”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to explain anything to me.”

“You say that, but I know you don’t mean it,” Bucky says, inclining his head just enough to meet Steve’s eye. “I would wanna know, too—so it’s fine. But I don’t much feel like slogging through the details, and I don’t know if I ever will.”

Steve gnaws his lip, something warring behind his eyes, but then he says, “Okay. Can I just ask—” He pauses when Bucky turns more fully toward him. “I don’t have to.”

Bucky considers him; Steve means well. He holds up a single finger. “One.”

“How are you … I mean, how did you get out? Did they let you go?”

Bucky laughs, rough and low. “No.”

“Are they looking for you?”

“Maybe. I don’t know so much. I’d sooner kill myself than let them take me again, though, so there’s that.”

Steve’s face folds, brief anguish, before he squares his jaw.  “Then we’ll just have to make sure they don’t,” he says.

Stiffnecked as always. Bucky almost smiles to see it. It’s so like him, to shove his chin in the air and challenge the world as easy as if this were some back alley scrap. The reminder of all that’s stayed just the same throws into sharp relief everything that’s changed.

Vertigo hits him. He sways on the spot.

Steve puts a steadying hand at his elbow. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Bucky says, then backtracks. “No.”

“I can finish the dishes. You ought to lie down.”

“Okay.”

“I am glad to have you here, Buck,” Steve says fiercely, as he guides Bucky toward the couch. “Whatever else. You have no idea.”

 

He lies on the couch awhile, when Steve says he needs to make a couple of phone calls. Work stuff, Steve assures him—nothing about Bucky, though it’s not as if Steve ever trusted cops much, unless that’s changed, too. He’d thought maybe he needed to call Dean. Steve shuts the door to the study, so it’s not like he can hear him anyway. That’s good. He stares up at the slowly revolving ceiling fan and tries not to think about anything till Steve comes back.

Doesn’t really work anymore, though. Damn. His only party trick. He knows it’s better—objectively, long term—not to be so disconnected from himself anymore. Thinking so much is a privilege, and better than the alternative. If it’s only off or on, no dimmer switch to be had, he’ll take on. He can still wish for some momentary peace from it, though.  

Steve comes shuffling up the hall half an hour later. He hasn’t bothered to change out of his sleep clothes either, but he seems to have brushed his hair.

“All squared away?” Bucky asks him.

“Close as it’ll get for today,” Steve says. He takes the armchair next to the couch. Tucks his feet up under him when he sits—that’s new. It makes him look so small.

“You don’t have to stop on my account,” Bucky says.

Steve’s smile is wan. “Sorry.”

“Where is Dean anyway?”

“He had to go in to the gallery.”

Bucky hums in acknowledgement, then falls silent again. Fits and starts.

“Buck,” Steve says slowly. When Bucky lifts his head to see him, Steve is propped on the armrest of the chair, leaning toward him with a complicated expression on his face. Bucky sits up—feels too much like he’s lying on a shrink’s couch with Steve looking like that.

“Remember when I used to get sick all the time?” Steve says. “Ma would make you wear one of those surgeon’s masks, and you’d sit with me and help me learn about what I missed at school.” He pauses to swallow, eyelids fluttering shut a moment. “You don’t know how much that meant to me. You’re probably the only reason I didn’t fail. What I’m trying to tell you is that—I don’t mind to help you catch up either, Bucky. I’m sorry about last night. I want to help you, in whatever ways I can.”

Bucky draws in a breath, then drops his head, shaking it. He huffs an exhale. Steve and his speeches. Christ, but he’s glad to be right here in this living room. “I know this isn’t easy for you either.”

Steve shrugs. “Not like you’re the first ghost I’ve seen.”

“Not _that_ story again.”

“You love that story!”

“When I was thirteen, maybe.”

Steve snickers, then settles back into his chair. “I mean it, Bucky. If there’s anything you want to know, just ask me, okay? About me or anything. If I don’t know, I’ll figure it out for you. We’ll figure this out.”

Bucky sets his teeth together, considering. He has so many questions, but one fights its way handily to the top. “Can you—” He cuts off, regroups. “I went by my family’s old place.”

Steve, for his part, seems to choke back any emotion before he speaks. “They’re not there anymore. Your father died in ‘46, and your ma just couldn’t stand it after that. She took the girls and went to live with her sister in Indiana—your aunt Hillary in Shelbyville.”

“Oh,” Bucky says, quiet. Sits with it for a moment. He’d never had much love for his father, but—it’s strange, to think that he had died and Bucky never knew. The grief hardly registers among everything else, but he feels it pricking at him.

“He’s buried out in Holy Cross, if you ever feel like visiting,” Steve says. “Only—well.”

“I’m next to him.”

“You’re not, though. It’s just words on a rock now.”

“Are they still in Indiana?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Becca’s husband has family out on Long Island, though, so they come this way for a visit at least once a year.”

“Becca’s married?”

“For a couple years now. I went to her wedding.”

“You keep in contact with them, then.”

“Of course I do. They were always like a second family to me. You being gone didn’t change that.” He pauses, eyebrows drawing together. “If anything, it might have brought us closer together.”

“Tell me about them,” Bucky says.

“Well, like I said, Becca’s married now. Her husband’s name is Robert Proctor, and he’s a real nice guy. I think you’d like him actually—not the kind of nice you hated, the kind you liked. Your ma has her own place up the street from your aunt now. Then Janet got married last year—”

“Holy hell.”

“And her husband is alright by me too, though you’d probably think he’s a prick, but I swear he’s not so bad once he knows you. He’s a banker—one of them swells, you know, but like I said, he’s alright.”

“What about Rosie? How old is she now—about twenty-two?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve says, smiling. “Rosemarie just graduated from Indiana State University, and she’s continuing on to veterinary school.”

“No shit?” Bucky asks, something pricking at his eyes. “My little Rosie’s gonna be a veterinarian?”

“She’s so smart, Bucky. She always was, but she talks fuckin circles around me now. She cares so much, it reminds me of—well.” He shakes his head, just a tiny movement. “You’d be so proud of her.”

“I am,” Bucky says. “God, of all of them. I can’t believe it.”

“It’s in no small part thanks to you, Buck. They never forget that.”

Bucky puts a hand to his mouth again, rubbing at his chin. His ma. His baby sisters—only they aren’t babies anymore, not even Rosie girl. A veterinarian. Goddamn. It’s nice to know they’d managed on their own, as much as he had always thought they would’ve been destitute without him. He should’ve known better about his girls. They were Barneses, after all, weren’t they?

“Am I—” he starts. “Am I … an uncle? Becca and Jan, they’re both—”

“Janet doesn’t have any yet, but Becca’s got two,” Steve says, voice thick. “Trying for a third, last she told me. They’re both boys—the older one is Ian, and the younger … well, he’s called James.”

Bucky sits back heavily. “Oh.”

“He’s about three now, I think.”

“Wow.”

“We all missed you like hell, Bucky.” Steve sucks in a breath. “I don’t mean that to make you feel bad or anything. I only say it because it’s the truth, and you ought to know. We missed you.”

Bucky nods, and something inside him opens up wide. This great ocean before him.

“I’ve got their phone numbers,” Steve says quietly.

The feeling lapping at him, Bucky looks up at Steve. “I got no idea what I’d say.”

“That’s alright. You don’t have to call till you want to, or ever. You could write to them—I’ve got their addresses.” Steve leans forward at the growing look of unease on Bucky’s face. “It’s only I think they deserve to know you’re not dead.”

“No, I know.”

“Your ma would put me in the ground if she found out I knew and didn’t tell her.”

“I know, Steve, it’s just ...”

“Just what?” Steve searches his face. He must not like whatever he finds, because he rises from the chair and crosses to the couch. He sits gingerly, leaving Bucky space, but sets his hand on the cushion between them.

Bucky studies the splay of Steve’s fingers against the upholstery, with all their fine elegance. He’d always had such a sure grip on everything. It’d baffled Bucky then; it knocks him all the way to the ground now, that Steve could be so open and certain like this. He’d never even really bothered to make sure Bucky was who he said he was—just let him into his home, easy as that. Bucky knows it’s not so simple for him—obviously it’s not. But Steve always knew how to get his feet back under him. Some kind of coltish steadiness to him. Never made any damn sense.

Bucky’s more sure-footed when it comes to actual feet, but that’s about it. He feels himself about be sucked in by a riptide.

“I don’t know,” Bucky mumbles.

“Buck,” Steve says slowly, “why’d you come here? How did you find me?”

Bucky huffs a breath, glad Steve’s finally cottoned onto something. Then he remembers he actually has to answer the question. Problem is, he’s not so sure he knows how.

He tries. “I was—in the neighborhood. Saw you on the street, followed you.”

“Okay, well, what were you doing in the neighborhood?”

“Lived here once, didn’t I?”

“That’s—” Steve sighs, pinches his nose. “That’s not really what I’m asking. What do you _want?_ You don’t wanna call your ma yet, that’s fine, but you got out for a reason. Where do you want to go from here?”

“What do I—I can leave, if I’m imposing, Steve.”

 _“No._ ”

He says it so forcefully that Bucky jerks his head around to see him. Steve eyes him for all of two seconds before something changes in his expression.

“I’m trying to ask if you have any kind of plan, Buck. Where you plan on going.”

Bucky blinks at him. A decade sits heavy on his tongue.

“Do you want to stay in Brooklyn?”

Bucky shrugs, then shakes his head—then nods. It’s a jumble of movement that looks more like a spasm than any kind of answer. He makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat.

“It’s alright if you don’t know. I meant what I said, okay? It’s just that you might want to think about what you want. How you want to live now you’re home.”

What he wants. Right. He’s got a whole goddamn life to live now.

What _does_ he want?

He finds Steve’s hand on the cushion and threads their fingers together, holding on tight. “Can you just tell me more about my sisters please.”

“Of course.” Steve tucks up onto the couch, settling in properly. His hand stays wrapped around Bucky’s. Bucky tips his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. Steve’s low, even voice washes over him while Bucky thinks, and stays quiet, and thinks.

 

When his brain’s so fried he thinks he might throw up again or lose consciousness, he takes refuge in the bathroom again. He’ll try a proper shower this time. Christ knows he needs it. Steve fetches a fresh towel and then leaves him to it.

Faucet’s not so hard to figure out. Ball valve like the sink—self-explanatory. He gets the hot water going before Steve has a chance to try to explain it to him through the door anyway.

In the shower, he keeps the same soap they used to buy. Figures. Why change what works? Bucky holds it under his nose for a while and inhales deep while the warm water loosens the grime from his skin. He’ll get to the actual washing in a minute. Maybe when the hot water goes out.

Once he’s clean and toweling off, he hears a soft rap at the door, barely a brush of knuckles.

“I said I’d go by the gallery this afternoon,” Steve says. His voice is muffled through the bathroom door.

Dragging the towel over his hair, Bucky says, “Afternoon’s running short.”

“I know.”

If Bucky had a pair of scissors, he could put his hair to right and forget he ever looked any different. Only that’s not true. Staring at himself in the mirror, still damp and naked—that much is obvious. But he might like to have short hair again. Make him look neat. He pulls his soft nightclothes back on before turning to the door.

Steve’s there on the foot of the bed. He stares at his hands, folded in his lap, as if that would make it seem like he wasn’t waiting.

“You gonna keep your word?” Bucky asks.

“I mean to,” Steve says, glancing up.

Humming an acknowledgement, Bucky flicks the light off in the bathroom and shuts the door behind him. He supposes he’ll—sit on the couch by himself some more while Steve’s gone. Stare at the ceiling. Jesus.

“Could I come?” he asks.

Steve’s brow furrows. “You want to?”

“I don’t have to,” he says quietly.

“No, no.” Steve holds up a hand to his mouth, then shakes his head. “Of course you can come with me. I’ll get you some proper clothes, sure.”

As Steve dives for the dresser in the corner, Bucky thinks he may have misstepped. Probably he has—probably Steve meant to go so he could talk to Dean alone. But Steve’s work is at the gallery, and Bucky is dead curious about it. Not to mention feeling stir crazy as hell in this apartment. That and he wasn’t so keen on letting Steve walk out the door on him. What he wants. Okay.

So maybe he’s imposing—in fact, there’s really no 'maybe' about it. Imposing’s all he’s been doing since he got here. But if Steve didn’t want him to come, all he had to do was say so.

Surely he still has some claim to this place, no matter how small or faded.

“Here,” Steve says and hands him a pile of clothes.

He ducks back into the bathroom to change. The door creaks open while he’s lingering over the mirror again. Terribly vain, him.

“There you go,” Steve says, soft from the doorway. “Not so out of place, huh?”

Bucky’s mouth presses into a line, but he nods. If Steve says so. He had a way of willing his beliefs into truths; usually it went better for Bucky if he just got on board. So—he must look fine. With the hat pulled low, no one’s going to look twice at him on the street. He blends into a crowd now, metal arm and all, better than he ever knew how before.

With his boots mostly hidden by loose trouser legs, Bucky waits quietly while Steve locks up the apartment. Steve leads him down to street level, casting glances at him like he thinks he’s being covert about it. Bucky tucks his hat lower over his head.

Steve’s block isn’t so busy, but the closer they get to Fulton, the more people there are—the more Bucky starts to notice the slight differences again. It’s the strangest vertigo. He focuses on Steve instead, watches him—watches out for him. That much is unwaveringly familiar, at least. Steve leads with authority, no hesitation; Bucky follows behind and feels calmer for it. Doesn’t spot any funny business besides the usual kind. Kids making a ruckus on the sidewalks and all that. Stickball. It almost doesn’t annoy him.

He half-expects some half-remembered face to grip his shoulder and cry out in recognition, like he’s Brooklyn’s prodigal son. He can’t decide if it’s better or worse that no one does. Probably it’s good. He’s alright keeping his head down.

It’s not too far a walk. Steve pauses outside the door of what is obviously the gallery and stands there, chewing on his lip.

“Spit it out,” Bucky says.

Steve gives him a withering look, then deflates. “You know my stuff’s hanging in here.”

“You don’t want me to see it?”

“That’s not it,” Steve says. “It’s only, I don’t think you’ll like it much.”

“Okay, Steve,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes. Like he ever hated anything Steve made.

“I mean it. It’s not like the stuff you remember me doing.”

“How so?”

Steve sighs, put upon, and reaches for the door. “Just come see.”

Bucky follows him into the gallery. It’s a good-sized place, well-lit, same nondescript white walls he’d learned to expect from running around places like this with Steve half his life ago. Steve walks, stiff-backed, toward a broad wall along the back.

A wide, unframed canvas done in splashdash splotches of deep blue dominates the center. Bucky's eyes catch the small placard to its side: _S.G. Rogers. Untitled #19, 1951. Oil on canvas (40 in x 40 in). For display only._

Bucky shuffles closer, thinking if he peers at it from a different angle, he might make sense of the shape. Only there’s no real shape to find.

“Huh,” he says.

“Told you,” Steve says from behind him. Bucky glances over his shoulder to see Steve standing back from him, arms crossed over his middle. With a wry twitch of his mouth, Steve frees one arm to gesture to the rest of the wall, which Bucky now sees is devoted almost entirely to Steve. Five more paintings hang there in various sizes, about the same save for the color. No real sense of subject; just a play of color and shade on the canvas.

“They’re—different,” Bucky says.

Steve huffs a laugh. “Sure are.”

“You don’t do portraiture anymore?” That’s what he remembers Steve being best at—capturing real, honest likenesses and energies of people. Got so good, some nights Bucky would rather have Steve draw him than bother looking in a mirror. It’s not that these new ones are ugly; in fact, as he turns back toward the blue one, he finds it quite striking. It’s just a far cry from what he remembers. But that tracks, he supposes.

“Sometimes,” Steve says. “This style’s in vogue now, though. I tried it once, liked it—sold it for a damn penance compared to what I’m pulling now. People eat this shit up.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow at him.

“I don’t know.” Steve shrugs. “I like it, otherwise I wouldn’t keep painting them. It’s a way to be expressive without being—too exposed, maybe.”

Bucky hums acknowledgement, eyes on the blue painting again. Something about it pangs at him. Melancholy—but he can’t decide if it’s his or the painting’s.

“So how famous are you anyhow?” Bucky asks.

Steve snorts a laugh, shaking his head. “I’m not famous, Buck.”

“Liar.”

“Maybe in certain circles or venues, if you mention my name, people might say, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve heard of that hack!’ But that’s gonna be about as good as it gets.”

“You don’t really think you’re a hack, do you?”

Steve rolls his eyes at the sincerity of the question, but he smiles faintly. Bucky always used to be his biggest fan. Maybe he still is.

“I like this one,” Bucky says, gesturing to the blue.

“You do?”

“Sure. I don’t know if I get it, but I see what you mean about being expressive.”

“Feeling more than image.”

“What feeling?”

Steve’s teeth dig into his bottom lip, his eyes still trained on the painting, like he’s appraising it. Bucky knows his tells, though. Sure enough, right on cue, Steve shrugs and flaps his hands in the air, noncommittal and dismissive all at once. Bucky doesn’t press it; he’s hiding, too.

“I should head back to the office,” Steve says. “Good news for you is there’s plenty to look at.”

“Sure,” Bucky says and pointedly plants his feet in front of the back wall.

Steve snorts. “Try not to break anything.”

“You either.”

Mouth twitching, Steve jerks an awkward thumb toward a hallway. Without another word he disappears down it, the floorboards creaking under his feet. A door opens and closes somewhere, and then all is quiet. No one else is here.

Bucky lingers for a long while in front of Steve’s wall. When the frantic rusts and oranges of another untitled painting start to claw like heat up the back of his throat, he tears himself away and heads for a set of benign landscapes. A field of flowers—nothing too evocative about that.

He can’t hear much besides the whirring of the ceiling fans. But if he inches down the hall, tilts his head just so—no. Flowers. It’s none of his business what’s going on back there.

Only then there are strained voices, unintelligible but that’s Steve if it’s anyone. The shouting grinds on for minutes. Then the sound cuts off abruptly. Bucky stares down a gloomy forest and works his jaw.

A door opens and slams, and Steve comes barreling down the hallway. He wipes a rough hand over his face, pausing for just the briefest instant. When he spots Bucky watching him with wide eyes, he aims straight for him.

“Steve—”

Steve grabs for his hand, almost aggressive about it, and starts for the door. Only when Bucky’s grip forces him to jerk to a stop does he meet his eye. Anger flares in his face, then melts into something almost—desperate.

“Let’s go,” he says. “Please, Buck, just come with me.”

“Okay,” Bucky says. He’s still bewildered, but this time when Steve tugs more gently on his hand, he goes. But Steve doesn’t turn right once they’re outside the door—instead he takes a sharp left.

Never once, even on the busy street, does he drop Bucky’s hand. Maybe no one cares in 1953. Maybe Steve walks with such purpose that no one questions it. They’re going somewhere. It doesn’t matter anymore.

The where—a nondescript building two blocks over. “This is my studio,” Steve mumbles, finally withdrawing his hand to key into the door. Bucky flexes his fingers. “Share it with a couple other people, but they shouldn’t be here.”

Up a compact staircase to the third floor, through another door, and then the room yawns wide and bright before them. Wide windows light up the drop cloths spread over the hardwood, more of them piled on a couch shoved against the wall. There’s a small kitchenette tucked into a corner, several big cabinets beside it. Easels and a desk. It’s a bare room, but well used.

Bucky hovers by the room’s edge even while Steve heads for the kitchen. Clearly this is somewhere he’s comfortable—his face is still flushed and blotchy, but there’s just an incremental shift in the set of his shoulders. A loosening. Bucky watches him down one glass of water, then another, and the red in his cheeks slowly fades. Most hydrated son of a bitch in all of Brooklyn.

“You alright?” Bucky asks, too quiet to really carry across the room. Steve notices anyway.

“Sorry for dragging you here like this,” Steve says.

Bucky shuffles closer to him and lowers his chin. “Steve.”

“I’m fine. Dean’s not allowed here unless I invite him, which I haven’t, so we’re fine.”

And that’s—too much, somehow. That Bucky should be let in so easily when others are turned away. He spins and makes for the couch, but halfway there he decides he’d rather not sit down at all. He sets his hands to his forehead, then over his eyes. He drops them to hang, mismatched and useless, at his sides.

“Steve, what did you—” But it dies in his mouth before he can ask it.

“He asked me questions and didn’t like the answers so much,” Steve offers anyway.

“Questions,” Bucky repeats, turning to face him. Mostly he stares at Steve’s shoes. Scuffed and dull like always.

“It’s not your fault, Buck, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

He finds Steve’s face, the soft look there. He wishes to Holy Mary there was any truth to that.

“I mean,” Steve says, “it’s about you, but it isn’t your fault. I always liked you best. There’s nothing that could change that.”

“Steve, you can’t just—Jesus _Christ.”_

“What?” Steve advances on him, as if he’s finally picked up the thread. “That’s true. This isn’t anything new between me and him.”

“I can’t let you uproot your whole life to accommodate me.”

“It’s my life.”

“That’s too much, Steve.”

“I never did anything by half, did I?” Steve holds his ground. Bucky’s jaw works, trying to find a way through. It’s unstoppable force against immovable object, but they always did fight that way. It’d be easier to keep it up if he could only know— “Buck,” Steve says, “there’s a reason I don’t do portrait work for pay anymore.”

Bucky’s chest draws tight as a drum.

Steve whirls toward the storage cabinets and opens one wide. The shelves inside are piled high with disorganized supplies—a whole stack of old sketchbooks. Steve takes one at random, his movement gentler now, reverent almost as he flips it open and proffers the pages to Bucky, spine in hand.

It’s his face there, of course. Fuck. As if he’d expected it to be anything else.

Steve turns the page, and there he is again looking all of a teenager. A bawdy sketch of him from behind on the next page, identifiable for the mole high on his right thigh. Steve sets that book to the side and takes out another, performs the same dissection, reveals the heart of him as it exists in charcoal and colored pencil.

Bucky stands quiet in the middle of the room.

“I never stopped, Bucky,” Steve says. “Not once in more than twenty years. Only it hurts too much now, so I shove everything in here and keep it under lock. It might’ve been nice to immortalize you like that somehow, have you in a gallery or museum so everyone could see, but I guess I always was a selfish bastard about it.”

He shuts the cabinet with a click, and when he turns back around, he has a hand pressed to his chest like he’s trying to hold something inside. “That’s why your ma and I are close as we are now. Then after your dad died—she knows about us, Buck. Being widowed herself made it plain as day to her that that’s—that I—”

A rough sob breaks in Steve’s chest. Bucky feels the gasping ache of it even as far apart as they’re standing.

“It wrecked me when you died,” Steve says. “I held out hope for so long after that first telegram, thinking they would find you and send you back home to me. It was nearly three years before we got the official notice. Gutted me all to hell to read it, Buck. I know that’s hard to hear, but I won’t pretend I didn’t fall to pieces for a long time. When my dad died I had my ma, and then when my ma died I had you, but then when you—”

Bucky takes a noisy breath. That seems to remind Steve to breathe, too, though it hardly slows him down.

“I never really moved past it. You know me, constant as the tide,” Steve says. A weak smile falters and falls from his face. “Dean’s not ignorant to that. He loved me anyway, and I loved him with as much as I had left to give, but sometimes that’s just not enough. You and I both know that. Didn’t stop me and him from trying, but always in the back of my head—and I guess this is the part that makes sense now. Something was off.

“I think I might’ve known you were still out there. Like I never stopped waiting on you to come back home. It sounds like a load of crock to me, too, but I don’t know how else to explain the feeling. I saw you on my porch yesterday and everything just—made sense to me again, even if none of it did.

“My life changed when you died, Buck.” Steve heaves a shrug, his eyes watery but determined. “I won’t pretend that you coming back doesn’t change things, too.”

“So you—what,” Bucky croaks, fumbling, “left your boyfriend for me?”

“Like I said, I like you best.” Steve holds his hands up, as if it really were as easy as that. It’s not, God knows they both know it’s not, but to see him so sure of himself, of what he wants—as if he’d hardly had to make a choice at all—

Bucky had never wanted much for himself. Steve had always been the dreamer between the two of them, all these grand plans for God and country and himself. But Bucky, all he had ever thought to ask for was food on the table and a way to keep warm in the winters. Whatever else didn’t matter so much to him as long as he could provide that much. He’d go where the current took him. For a long time that current was Steve, was his family.

All he’d wanted—

What did he _want?_

“Bucky,” Steve says.

Steve had asked him something similar, from where he lay in a sunspot on the floor, stretched out like a cat and happy as a clam, that first summer in their shabby third floor walk-up. The memory is all in pleasant yellows in his head—the warmth of the sun, Steve’s hair like goldenrod in its light, yellow sheets on the bed in want of a wash. An image—a feeling.

Steve had asked, and Bucky remembers he’d said easy as you please: _This here._

It sounds so idyllic in his head, but he remembers too that he’d had his shifts cut just the next day, and then Steve had caught a summer cold on top of it, and his pa was asking could he spare a few dollars for new shoes for the girls when Bucky knew damn well that’s not what he wanted the money for.

He’d been happy in spite of it, though. That spring day when Steve decided enough with the bullshit and asked Bucky, point blank, if he had feelings for him—he’d never been so relieved to just spill his guts.

Steve had always been bold and open about the way he felt. To him, an opinion wasn’t worth a damn if it wasn’t worth saying, too. Got him into trouble more times than Bucky could be reasonably expected to sit down and count. Bucky never admitted to it lest he encourage Steve, but it was always something he’d admired about him. Loved him for.

He makes it all look so easy, even when Bucky can see plain on his face that it isn’t. Steve does it anyway. He knows what he wants.

Could it be so easy for Bucky, too? Maybe with Steve, it could be.

Maybe that’s all he wants. Certain things are constant and unalterable.

In front of him, in the studio, Steve’s eyes are wide and waiting. He’s laid himself bare again, and now he stands steady to face whatever Bucky might give him in return this time.

He doesn’t know how much he has left to give. Doesn’t know how much of it Steve might actually want, when it comes down to it.

But, like some final wall inside him breaking, he decides he’d like to try.

It’s too difficult to put to words, so instead, he closes the distance between them and pulls Steve into a hug so fierce either one of them might crack. Steve’s hands knot in the back of his shirt while Bucky grips him just as tightly. Despite the strong hold, Bucky feels his lungs relax into the first easy breath he’s taken in days.

What he wants. Yes.

“I’m sorry,” Steve breathes into his collar. “God, I’m so sorry, Buck.”

“What the hell are you sorry for,” Bucky says. “It’s me who should—”

_“No.”_

“Fine. Five minutes, then we’re done. No more apologizing.”

“Okay.”

Bucky suggests they might as well stay awhile and somehow, without disentangling, they make it to the couch. Steve seems hesitant to just clamber all over him the way he used to, so Bucky hauls him into his lap. Steve huffs and smiles, then lays his head at Bucky’s collar. He settles, and Bucky’s rattling breath slowly deepens till their chests rise and fall together.

The light through the windows fades. Shadows reach long over the floorboards then dim to darkness, and still Bucky’s hand traces up and down Steve’s spine like reading braille. You don’t need the light for that. Bucky’s no poet himself, but he recognizes the homecoming written here.

When it’s dark and still in the studio, Steve starts to shift away. Bucky grips at him, unwilling to let him go so soon, but Steve just smiles soft. He reaches up to lay his palm over Bucky’s cheek. His fingertips brush the hair out Bucky’s eyes; his thumb circles tenderly over the apple of Bucky’s cheek.

Bucky holds his eye, watching his face, while Steve sets his other hand at Bucky’s neck. He trails it lower to touch the seam between muscle and metal—doesn’t even flinch, like he meant to do it. His fingers rub there, curious and soothing at once. Bucky shivers.

“You can feel that?” Steve asks. He touches lower, over the shoulder. “You can feel me?”

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes.

Steve smiles wonderingly. His eyes flick to Bucky’s lips and back up. An unintentional question, maybe, but one Bucky means to answer. He slides his hands up Steve’s back and rises up to meet him. Their lips connect, soft and just a bit clumsy. Bucky picks it back up again easy enough, with Steve’s hand at his jaw to guide him.

Steve’s mouth is warm and open against his. He is only vulnerable in his sheer lack of compunction. In the low light of the street, Bucky can just feel his flush to know it’s there, where it spreads. All of him spread wide—Steve always was bad with secrets, even in his body. Pink and cream and lavender.

Christ if age hasn’t made him anything but more beautiful. He still kisses like the world’s gonna end any moment. Bucky lays him out along the couch and tries to reassure him with his mouth that it won’t. Not on his watch.

When Steve starts fumbling with the buttons of Bucky’s stiff, starchy clothes, Bucky sits up and yanks the shirt off himself. He swats Steve’s greedy hands away in favor of getting them both undressed. Then they’re just skin to skin, man to man.

Steve’s sure grip on him, never faltering even over his rough edges, is steadying. Steve is different underneath him, too, but not so changed Bucky’s forgotten how to touch him like this. He runs a heavy hand over Steve’s chest, presses kisses in his own wake, while Steve grips his hair and murmurs endearments.

This isn’t going to last long, Bucky already knows. Steve gets worked up so easy by Bucky’s hands. It’s not just his mouth that’s warm and open. Bucky wraps his hand around the both of them and thrusts into his own grip, Steve’s dick hot and intimate against him. They kiss again. It’s breathless and uncoordinated, the whole act, but Bucky’s never been able to feel the precise shape of his heart inside his chest like this.

Steve goes off over Bucky’s fingers, shuddering and whimpering and apologizing for it till Bucky reminds him their five minutes was up an hour ago. Bucky’s a little shyer about it these days, apparently, but with Steve encouraging him every way he knows how, it’s not so long before Bucky comes hard between them. Steve’s hands fall away from him only to find his face again. They’ve both got faces as wet as the mess on Steve’s stomach; Bucky sees that once his eyes clear enough to see Steve in the dim.

He hadn’t realized he’d started crying. He doesn’t know what could have brought it on. Overwhelmed by all this wanting, maybe, that it had had to spill out of him in every way possible. Steve wanting him—even like this, as long as it’s been—is almost too much to comprehend.

But he does, somehow. Something had overwhelmed him, too. Bucky kisses him again, gentle and almost pious about it, till they both calm down.

Steve mops up the worst of the mess with a stray drop cloth, then drags the afghan off the back of the couch to cover them. He tucks between the cushions and Bucky’s body like he’s settling in.  

“I take it we’re staying here tonight,” Bucky says.

“If you don’t mind,” Steve says.

In lieu of an answer, Bucky presses his lips to Steve’s hair all askew. They stay like that awhile. It’s peaceful even, like he hasn’t known in forever. He’d like to bask in it, pretend for five minutes this couch is green instead of brown and there’s a record crackling in the background, asking to be flipped.

But his head’s picking up speed again like a distance runner. Still trying to catch up. Maybe that feeling never ends, but now he thinks he might have the endurance to bear it.

“You said about my ma,” Bucky says. “That she knows.”

Steve’s hand stills where it had been rubbing circles low on Bucky’s belly. “Yeah.”

“How do you mean she knows?”

“I never said anything to her,” Steve says, resuming his circles. “She just asked me one day, after your pa had gone, did you love my son. Of course I said yes but then she said, did you love him like a man loves his wife. By that point, I didn’t see any reason I had why I should lie to her.”

“So what did you tell her?”

“I said Freddie, I don’t know why you’d use the past tense when you know I still do. You know, or you wouldn’t have asked me something like that.”

“And what—how did she—”

“She didn’t say anything for a couple minutes.” Steve sits up and meets his eye as well he can in the moonlight. “I never told you this because I didn’t want to worry you any more than you already did, but I always thought she might suspect, even back then. Your ma’s got that eagle eye. So she was quiet a while, then she just said, and I remember exactly, ‘Thank God for you, Steve Rogers.’ Then she hugged me till I thought I might burst with it.”

Bucky swallows hard. “What did she mean by that?”

“Only that she was happy you’d had someone, I think.”

Some half-choked sound batters its way out of him. He expects he should feel scared. More than that—terror, which is how he’d felt for the whole back half of the ‘30’s. To think that maybe none of that had ever mattered, that it certainly didn’t matter now, or that maybe the only reason it didn’t matter to her was that she’d lost him—

A lot’s changed in ten years. There’s no denying.

“I think I’m gonna hurl,” he says, and clambers off the couch.

He makes it to the sink before he retches. Not much comes up save bile. He’s aware, however dimly, of Steve at his side holding his hair back with one gentle hand. His stomach must want to be absolutely sure it’s empty. When he finally settles, he realizes he’s trembling. No small wonder—he’s bare-assed in this huge, drafty room.

“Here,” Steve says, dragging the afghan around his shoulders. “Sit back down. I’ll bring you some water.”

Bucky wobbles back to the couch and takes the glass when offered, mismatched hands wrapping tight around it. Steve curls onto the cushion next to him and when he reaches out all tentative, Bucky doesn’t flinch from his touch. He cards his fingers through Bucky’s hair, scratching at his scalp the way Steve always liked when he wasn’t feeling well. It was all the coddling he’d stand for. Bucky had learned that trick from his mother when Rosie was a baby and crying all the time. He would watch her shushing and soothing, petting so delicately at Rosie’s soft baby skull till Rosie quieted.

“I need to phone my ma,” he says.

“Any time you’re ready, Bucky.”

“In the morning.”

“I can—if you want, I’ll make the call and explain before I put you on the line.”

“That might be easier. Don’t wanna give her a heart attack.”

“She’s still spry.”

Bucky chuckles, a startled sound.

“In the morning,” Steve parrots.

“Steve. You know she’ll want me to come see her.”

“Well, sure. You should. It’s your ma.”

“She might ask me—she’ll ask me if I’ll stay.”

“Oh,” Steve breathes, heavy. His hand falls to his lap, where he stares hard. “Is that—will you? Stay there?”

“I think maybe I ought to.”

“Okay.”

Bucky thinks a moment. “Steve.”

“What?”

“Steve, please look at me a minute.”

His eyes are sharp and sudden, the divot between his brows the only thing telling. That and the quiver in his lip. Setting the glass aside, Bucky lays a hand on his knee and grips hard. “I think,” he says, “it might do me good to get out of New York a while.”

“Sure.”

“It's just that I'm still—” Bucky waves a hand at his head, indicating something that's nameless. “And you’ve got nowhere to live, Steve.”

“I have—I’ll figure out where—Bucky, _please.”_ Steve clutches at Bucky’s chest, his neck, like maybe he’s trying to find the magic spot that will make him stay. Clarity descends on Bucky like a shroud even before Steve says, “Please don’t go. I can’t stand it if you do, I’m sorry, please God. Don’t leave me again.”

Bucky takes him by the shoulders and pushes him—not away, just far enough back to look him in the face. Steve’s all red-eyed again, almost wild with it, something in his expression difficult to name.

“You let me go just this once more,” Bucky says, “and I swear I’ll come back to you.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“And I’ve kept my word so far. I just need a couple minutes to breathe, Steve—it’s so much. One thing at a time.” Steve hangs his head, quaking, but Bucky takes his chin in hand and lifts him up again. “What have I always said to you? I mean it. I mean to come back to you.”

When Steve kisses him, he is undeniably fierce about it. Never mind that Bucky’s mouth surely must taste awful. Steve is hungry and unstoppable and Bucky loves him so much in that moment that he thinks he might not bear to go after all. He forgets to breathe for how much he loves him, old and new, different and the same, until his lungs start burning and he breathes dragon-breath and hauls Steve impossibly closer to him. He makes sure Steve knows he means it with every touch.

 

In the morning, Steve borrows a neighbor’s rotary and sits with it against the wall by the door. His fingers are sure on the dial. After a long ten minutes, he holds out the phone to Bucky where he’s been pacing by the windows. “Buck, she wants to talk to you.”

Bucky is across the room before he finishes. First he takes the phone and then, when Steve makes to get up, Bucky takes his hand, too, and sits along the wall.

He puts the receiver to his ear, and breathes.

“Ma?”

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

Spring is turning Indiana green when Steve says to him, the glory of his voice crackling down the line, “I’m looking at places out on Long Island.”

“Are you?” Bucky asks, from where he leans his elbows on his mother’s dining table. She still keeps it dusted and polished; its gleam reflects his every gesture. When he reaches for his toast, he’s careful to move his elbows. That’s all his ma expects of him—table manners and his help with the garden. He’s safe here; no one’s after him. He could almost feel settled.

“I like the thought of living by the ocean with all that fresh air. There’s be enough room for a studio, too, all in one.”

Bucky can picture it with easy clarity: Steve by a broad window on a morning, open to the breeze. He’d stand at his easel, steaming cup of coffee on a stool nearby. He won’t have brushed his hair yet, too inspired by the early sun reflecting off the waves to bother. Maybe his freckles would come back, with all that sunshine.

“That sounds nice,” Bucky says, suddenly gruff.

“You think so?” Steve says. “Thought you’d always be a city boy.”

“The fresh air’s growing on me.” He pauses, chews his toast, listens to Steve breathing into the receiver. “You could come get some, you know,” he says. “Air, I mean. Out here.”

Steve’s quiet for a long beat. “Could I?” he asks, voice reedy.

“How about weekend after next, if you’re free,” Bucky says. “The girls and all will be over for dinner on Sunday. Wait till you see Jim, he’s sprouting like a weed. And you know Ma’s dying to see you.”

“And what about you?”

“Me? Oh, sure,” Bucky says, then takes a deep breath. “Yeah, Steve. I miss you like crazy.”

“God, Buck, I want to see you so bad.”

“Come out here and see me then. You and I can bunk up, and I’ll show you my garden.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, slow, not rising to the joke, “you know I’d be glad to.”

It’ll be good, to have Steve here with him, where everything is flat and green. Bucky was honest, when he said he missed him. The phone’s just not the same; there’s always so much to see on his face, and Bucky’s tired of feeling like he’s missing out on something. He’s had enough of that for a lifetime. He can’t get that image out of his head, Steve by the window. It sticks in his mind and flickers to life. He’s sitting on a couch nearby with his own cup of coffee, half-reading a paperback and half-watching Steve work. Or maybe Bucky is part of it—maybe Steve has his tongue between his teeth as he tries to capture the way the ocean breeze ruffles Bucky’s hair.

New York calls out to him across the telephone wire more distinct than he’s ever heard. They’d still be close to his city, the skyline in the distance. But he could be far enough away to give himself a new start—a fresh one, with fresh air. Indiana’s been good to him, but it isn’t his home.

“You know,” Bucky says, and means what he’s saying; hopes Steve can hear the truth in it, the want, as clear as anything he’s ever felt, “I’ve been missing New York.”

“Oh, that so?” Steve laughs, soft and throaty. “Thought you liked that air out in Shelbyville.”

“I have,” Bucky says, “though I don’t know a thing about Long Island, so I guess you’ll have to tell me about it.”

“Sure, I can do that.”

He’ll need to be straightforward then. Goddamn telephones. What he wants—he knows now. He wants Steve to show him his place in the world—his home. He wants to help him build it, if Steve will have him.

“I’d like to see what you have in mind, if you’ve got any pictures you can bring when you visit,” Bucky says. “And I’m real particular about window treatments, so I’ll want some input there.”

He hears Steve’s quiet intake over the line, and he aches to think of that hopeful tilt of Steve’s brow that he’s sure is there. A loaded silence builds between them, punctuated by the creak of floorboards as Bucky’s mother moves about upstairs. Bucky adjusts his grip on the phone, and he waits.

“You mean it?” Steve finally breathes.

“I do.”

“Any curtains you want, Buck,” Steve says, though in truth Bucky couldn’t give a damn about window treatments. Any way the place might look, that’s not what matters to him.

He knows what home is. It’s the sun bouncing off the back of that blond head he happened across in Brooklyn again in the first place.

**Author's Note:**

> You can support this work further by sharing the [masterpost](http://bride-ofquiet.tumblr.com/post/174508547953/an-unfamiliar-coast-a-2018-captain-america-reverse). Be sure to check out the rest of this year's RBB collection!


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